ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

I am, of course, delighted to hear and to see that in fact my love of capes and cloaks is not out of line with the fashion consensus for the coming Northern Winter.

Capes can be casual and comfortable, easy to throw around the shoulders. They can also be smart and sophisticated; they can be fun and sassy, and then of course they can be seriously sexy, sensuous, and just plain gorgeous. A cape can be punk or funky, and it can be ethnic or modern – a cape be any look you want, and it can compliment any clothing style that you like or can imagine.

SO the cape or cloak is great over an evening dress, a tank and jeans, a negligee, a summer dress, a formal dress, around the shoulders of a business suit – even over a a bikini or your sexy underwear. Capes Rock.

A cape is so easy to wear and you can wear it anywhere. It can be dressed up or down using various pins and brooches or ties – you decide how your cape should appear. It can also define itself by the yarns that are used to create the cloak or cape. Faux fur is a fashion trend for this coming winter and luxury mohairs are okay again.

It is a funny thing the cycling of yarns and garments, isn’t It? Why don’t we ever just say – “This is what I like, this is the colour I like, I am not concerned with trend reports, I am only concerned with what I love. For what it is worth – I love capes and cloaks and I love the earthy colours, the warmth and lightness of wearing a faux fur with a fine mohair or alpaca yarn, I love the purples and then the reds and then the blues and then …. well it seems I just love colour and in no particular order.

There is plenty of time to find the pattern and the yarns for your cape for the winter of 2010. My Etsy shop has the Kiwi Cape available pattern now and I will be adding the multicolour cape that is in the gallery very soon. It is so easy to knit being all garter stitch and it is an easy one to play with the yarns you have in your stash. There are others and I will announce them as I complete them.

The photo gallery is of some of my capes, cloaks and some little capelet, poncho pieces as well. As I locate photographs of others I shall add them to this gallery. I do hope you will find something here that gives you an idea or a plan for your winter wardrobe.

The Cape is perfect for a newer knitter – no sleeves, simple shaping, small enough to not get bored with and frustrated by. They are also ideal for trying new yarns and colours, or to use up yarns from your stash. In these more austere times a cape will not require a huge outlay in monies, and your cape will dress up all of your current wardrobe items.

So don’t allow the winter of 2010 be the winter of your discontent because you do not already have one or two trendy, knitted capes and cloaks ready to wear by the time the weather begins to turn.

I feel like I am buried under balls of many types – polystyrene for textile art knit applications in the public arena as well as hundreds of balls of yarn for patterns and ideas – and I come up for air and hope the ball in my hand is suitable for the idea running around in my head.

I have purchased 2 large polystyrene balls – one about 160 cm round and the other about 124cm. These nearly match two out in the big wide world. It means I do not have to go out and test the knitting against the balls.

The problem is, or it may not a problem and just something new to consider. I want to create textile art pieces for these balls for permanent exhibition.

How do you keep a ball standing still?

How will a knitted textile stand up to being on a spherical object long term?

Does anyone do it already – so that I can find out the answer to the permanancy question?

I think small round weights of some kind will hold it steady, or perhaps the ball could be set into a round saucer shape inside a square plinth or stand, or something. That part can be worked out quite well.

But the spherical textile – what will happen there – I do not know. So only time will tell, or maybe someone will help me with that information. I do hope so.

The trouble is that these balls keep on coming into my head space – and I am working on my patterns, and I do need to do to that to help pay for future yarns, and I am just a bit discombobulated.

I am also working out which patterns to include in my Intarsia book – so I become even more discombobulated – if that is possible.

Just how many ways can one keep neck and shoulders warm – That is the question. It is an important question here in the depth of winter in the Netherlands. These are all patterns to come.

1. Black and white Neck warmer

2. Cream wool / mohair Neck warmer

3. Mohair varigated moebius scarf – as head and neck warmer

4.Oatmeal Shoulder Warmer Cowl/Poncho in Rowan Kid Classic

Danish born, brought up in New Zealand and have been living in the Netherlands since Sept. 2008 because Best Beloved has work here at present.

I have been knitting since the mid 1950′s and began designing my own pieces in my early 20′s. These early designs related to the yarns I could purchase very cheaply from bargain bins and at end of the season – so there was not a big range to choose from for any piece. But buying yarns this way meant I became quite innovative in my colour and yarn use and very early discovered that the required yarn for any pattern is simply to force one to buy that specific yarn and is so absolutely untrue.

Designing and crafting has always been part of my life and I have created pieces using various skills including embroidery, basket weaving, marbling, tie dying fabrics, crocheting, knitting etc.

I love cooking and had an experience which will never be forgotten as a young teenager of 15/16 where I was one of 12 finalists in “Cook of the Year” a New Zealand recipe and cooking competition. This meant I had to be part of a bakeoff – where I cooked my own recipe (the one that I had put forward which placed me in the finals) and a recipe of one of the other finalists. Pretty scary as a young person and of course I drew the recipe of the ultimate winner to be created along with my own recipe.

My “real work” work from the end of the 1970′s was in library systems – first helping put the first library catalogue onto a computer system (data entry, form filling), then working with the Dynix Library System first at Auckland Public Library, then with Dynix itself as a library Support person eventually becoming Manager of Dynix New Zealand. In early 2000 I became the Library Systems Manager at Whangarei District Library where my most interesting project was establishing a Mobile Library Service for the Whangarei District – from buying and outfitting the bus, working out bus routes, and sorting out the technology as well as managing the library system itself.

Now I can barely manage my own computer – especially in this last 18 months with my computer in storage for the first 6 months and using Best Beloved’s work laptop when it was available. Once we were established here with our stuff in a house we did get mine out of storage and I lived and worked with blue screens and crashes for nearly 8 months. I have now replaced it and I do not like my very first laptop, and I hate office 2007 and I hate Vista so far.

I have created / designed many many more pieces than I now can remember and they have gone to many places in the world – from New Zealand to Denmark and England. Now that I have a digital camera – I still manage to complete pieces and not photograph them – but I really do try to photograph everything I create.

Craft / Art Experience:

1973/74 – Cook Street Market – Auckland. I designed and created knit and crochet garments for babies & children, hats & waistcoats of many colours for adults. One passion was multi coloured shawls which I knitted and crocheted. I did also create garments after tie dying the fabrics. I am a lousy sewer but did create hippy style shirts to sell at the market as well. I made many natural cane baskets – banished myself to the bathroom with a bathtub of soaking cane and sat there weaving. Loved the results, hated the process (that is sitting in a cold bathroom – I loved the weaving and creating), and it played havoc with my hands and back.

In 1974 or 75 my mother and I had a stall at the Parnell markets where I sold machine knitted sweaters and received my first commisions for fair isle machine knitted sweaters and cardigans – when I had had the machine for only a week or two. Now that was a bit of a leap of faith on part of the purchaser – but it did work out in the end. The knitting machine didn’t last long as a passion as I like knitting whereever I am, in the car, at the dinner table, watching TV (depends on the piece being knitted), at friends and relatives homes everywhere. In fact the knitting machine never really became a passion at all and I gave it away to a friend in the 1980s.

1976/78 – Craft group in Titirangi, New Zealand – often at my home where we pooled our knowledge of knitting, crochet, basket weaving as well as the tie dying of fabrics – probably the first “stitch ‘n Bitch” group in New Zealand.

1982/3 – Craft group at Arahoe Primary School – Titirangi, New Zealand. I loved teaching the kids and they were open to trying anything so I did teach various crafts to them including crochet, basket weaving and creating string pictures and more.

1990 – Workshop “Marbling on fabric & paper” with Maxine Lovegrove – Auckland, New Zealand which helped develop my colour use in my beautiful pieces.

In the Netherlands I have added felting, shadow knitting, Hyperbolic planes, and now knitted graffiti to what I do. It is amazing how a new place can encourage you to extend yourself.

I am passionate about colour and texture and uses my knits to surprise and encourage in the wearer a confidence of expression. A confidence to wear the unusual and to enjoy how it feels and how the colours shift and adjust depending on the light of the day or space one is in. A confidence to wear magic – and it is magic.

I am delighted when someone is passionate about what I do.

I have finally established my presence at “The Place to buy and sell all things handmade” ETSY.

Well it is not exactly a presence yet. I have managed to add 4 items to each shop and to set up a basic environment. It is amazing what has to be done to establish a great cyberspace presence. It will take me a bit of time to get my head around the process.

See Connielene and Unique Boutique

The very silly reason for 2 ETSY shops is that I didn’t read all the detail properly, well I didn’t absorb all the detail properly and added Unique Boutique before realising that my user name was also my shop name. So I will see how two Etsy shops go and decide later whether it is worth the effort or not.

My aim with Connielene is to include those pieces which are unique – these pieces will generally use many, many different colours; many, many different fibres and should be exciting and magic to wear. They will also be impossible to ever repeat. They will be the pieces that could be in exhibitions.

I will also include my edgy fashion pieces like my NOT fox fur capelet. These I can repeat, and do, and they have become an important part of my collection.

In Unique Boutique I will include the things I create with only one or two yarns and/or colours and are quite simple – but each will still be unique – as I do not usually purchase enough yarn to repeat exactly any piece.

I will also include my shadow knitted wall hangings and new felted pieces in the ConnieLene shop.

I have just looked at my pile, no, my mountain of UFO’s. So the sweater or jacket will have to wait until the new year. In the meantime I am finishing my unfinished pieces.

3 x Danish Shawls
4 x Moebius scarves
6 x Capes requiring buttons, trims, etc
1 x large bed cover – Christmas present
and 2 pairs of red socks to be created by Christmas – and I have not started them as yet, and they are orders, family orders but still orders.
and 2 hats to be created for 2 boys – also Christmas presents
and 1 cardigan to be completed which could be a Christmas present. It was indirectly a request, and the colours were chosen in April, and I started knitting it then – but it is too stripey in design as per request, and I am not in love with it. I love the colours, I just cannot get into these stripes – too formal, not challenging, not interesting but I shall venture on, maybe add some other colours, maybe slip in some intarsia or even try some fair Isle.

The big thing is that my very own magically coloured, intarstia knit, free form, creation, in many yarns, is not going to get a look in for a while.

I have never never made, knitted, created a pair of socks before either – too many challenges and not enough time.

Thank you to Cat Bordhi and “A Treasury of Magical Knitting” as today I have begun my first Moebius Scarf using the Moebius Cast on and knitting magically from that. Yes I am knitting from the spine or centre line out and yes I am magically knitting as described in the book.

I have owned this book for about 2 years and I am only now testing the process. What took me so long? It is fun and it is so easy and I am not going to explain the technique. Buy the book or borrow it from your local library.

I shall take this to my Stitch ‘n Bitch group this evening – I am certain that they will have, or some of them will have already created a Moebius Scarf.

Some of us are just slow at picking up new ideas and running with them. My mind is going nuts with how I might use what I have learned today.

One can do wonders with an extensive stash of yarns. I do not an extensive stash here in the Netherlands, although I am trying to fix that situation. Some of my yarn from New Zealand has founds its way to me and I have been able to purchase new yarns that have never been available to me except over the net.

So some of the stuff I am creating is a bit different – I am making pieces for a colder climate, pieces that are safe as well as gorgeous to wear when cycling (seeing as I am in the Netherlands), and a dress and a felted Jacket for exhibition in New Zealand. I have also been playing with the Hyperbolic Plane – increases in a scarf, as well working on the Moebius scarf and the Magic Cast On.